The World Tour of a T-Shirt (and Why It’s Not a Vacation)
Ever tossed that perfectly imperfect dress into a donation bin, thinking, “Voila! My fashion sins are washed away”? What if I told you your donation is less a redemption arc and more the start of a globe-cantering, transformation-heavy saga? This is the unexpected afterlife of your hand-me-down wardrobe - and a reminder that donating doesn’t always absolve us.
The Myth of Donation as Redemption
We’ve been taught to treat donation as a kind of moral laundering. Out of sight, out of mind, and (so we tell ourselves) into the hands of someone in need. The reality is far less tidy.
Globally, only 10-30% of donated clothing is resold domestically, with the rest bundled, baled, and shipped across oceans (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2022). And here’s the uncomfortable truth: much of it is not charity - it’s commerce.
Where Our Clothes Really Go
Once clothing leaves your wardrobe, its path splinters:
16.5% makes it back onto thrift store racks - the pieces deemed desirable enough to sell locally. Limited shelf space means most never even make it onto the shop floor (Clothing Please, 2023).
36% is downcycled domestically, shredded into rags, insulation, or padding (Clothing Please, 2023).
33% is exported overseas in massive bales, much of it destined for African markets. In 2022 alone, nearly 900,000 tonnes of used clothing arrived at African ports (UN Comtrade, 2022).
0.5% is distributed through welfare programs, despite the common perception that donations directly clothe those in need (Clothing Please, 2023).
14% ends up in landfill, often via the charities themselves when items prove unsellable or unusable (Clothing Please, 2023).
So, that bag in the donation bin may travel thousands of miles only to end up in a different dump.
The Unequal Geography of Waste
Kenya and Ghana are emblematic of this imbalance.
Kenya imported nearly 185,000 tonnes of secondhand clothes in 2023 - double the volume from a decade earlier (UN Comtrade, 2023). While the trade supports millions of livelihoods, it also leaves behind mountains of waste. In Nairobi, discarded textiles clog drainage systems and pile up in Dandora, one of Africa’s largest dumpsites (UNEP, 2023).
In Ghana’s sprawling Kantamanto Market, traders gamble on mystery bales, many containing unsellable, poor-quality fast fashion. It’s estimated that 40% of clothing arriving in Ghana becomes waste, much of it dumped, burned, or washed into the sea (Fashion Revolution, 2022). Beaches glint not only with shells, but with polyester threads.
This is not aid. It is a transfer of responsibility - a convenient outsourcing of disposal from the Global North to nations with limited infrastructure to manage the volume. Scholars and activists call it what it is: waste colonialism.
Infrastructure Strained to Breaking Point
Clothing, unlike traditional recyclables, is difficult to process. Mixed fibres resist recycling; synthetics shed microplastics; dyes leach into soil and waterways (Greenpeace, 2022). Even wealthy countries struggle to manage textile waste, so expecting underfunded municipalities in Accra or Nairobi to do so is an abdication of global responsibility.
The imbalance is staggering. Europe alone exports nearly half of its used textiles to Africa (UN Comtrade, 2022). Meanwhile, local textile industries struggle to compete with the flood of cheap imports. Kenya, once home to a thriving garment manufacturing base, now operates its mills at less than half capacity (World Bank, 2022).
What arrives as “donation” too often becomes a systemic burden - piling costs onto economies that never produced the problem in the first place.
Stories Woven Into the Waste
Yet within this imbalance lie human stories - of resilience, ingenuity, and survival.
Kantamanto’s traders, largely women, form the backbone of an informal economy, extending the life of garments one sale at a time. Kenyan tailors patch and rework imported clothes to give them a second chance.
But it comes at a cost: financial risk for traders saddled with unsellable bales, respiratory illness from burning synthetics, polluted rivers where dye and plastic fibres accumulate. The garments are not neutral. They carry with them the legacy of overproduction, underuse, and the externalised consequences of fast fashion.
A Better Way Forward
Donation is not inherently bad. Clothes deserve longer lives, and extending their use has real environmental benefits. But donation should not be an excuse for unchecked consumption, nor a free pass for the fashion industry to overproduce.
Instead, we need to:
Buy less, buy better. Reduce demand at the source.
Extend responsibility. Policies like Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) must hold brands accountable for end-of-life management.
Support local systems. Investing in textile recycling infrastructure where clothing is consumed - not just where it is dumped.
Shift cultural norms. Rewearing, repairing, and revaluing garments must become the rule, not the exception.
Final Thought: Donation Isn’t a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card
Here’s the bottom line: when you slide a bag of clothes into that green bin, you’re not ending your responsibility - you’re passing the baton. What happens next - worn again, repurposed, or discarded - depends on the systems, people, and choices your donation meets along the way.
As environmental activist Lucy Siegle puts it: “The life of a garment doesn’t end at the shop - it begins a journey that can either sustain people and planet, or burden them.”
Make sure your clothes - and your choices - leave a trail that’s worth following.
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